Get some home cookin' for your next game -- complete with bar food you made yourself

Dan Macdonald

Wednesday

Oct 28, 2015 at 4:53 PM

It may not have been intentional, but our homes have come to resemble the local bar.

We have big-screen TVs and have access to any sport we want to watch. Great craft beers once found only on tap can be purchased at the local grocery. We have unlimited jukeboxes playing from a wide array of electronic devices.

The only thing that is truly missing from the tavern experience is bar food - those great appetizers that can serve as a meal. They are mostly fried, salty, a little spicy.

What makes this menu convenient is that, except for the wings, it uses the same basic cooking technique of dredging in bread crumbs and frying. A recipe for baked chicken wings is included for those who want to get away from fried food.

Restaurant kitchen equipment like a deep fryer isn't needed for this menu. But a large cast iron pan, which is a kitchen essential, is a must-have. Its sides should be high enough to hold the quantity of oil needed to fry and also turn items without allowing hot oil splashing from the pan.

Let's start with the Scotch eggs. Most people think of them as Irish pub food, but I had one recently in a Charleston, S.C., bar and found it works in any tavern setting.

For the unfamiliar, the Scotch egg is a soft-boiled egg, wrapped in seasoned sausage, fried and baked. When cut in half, the yolk should be a gelatinous yellow liquid that oozes from the egg white that is encased in a beautifully browned sausage.

Exploring recipes on the Internet, I found several to be unreliable. The eggs were undercooked and impossible to wrap in sausage without exploding in your hand. Once breaded, they call for the egg to be placed in hot oil for 3 minutes, then turned. The oil blackened the coating when the item was left to just sit.

Through experimentation, I discovered a recipe that yielded the proper Scotch egg.

Start by preparing your sausage. Links can be used by cutting through the casing lengthwise and squeezing out the meat, or you can just buy a bulk package of unwrapped sausage. Season it with herbs and spices such as nutmeg, cumin, parsley, thyme and add some scallion and yellow English mustard (Colman's is renowned worldwide).

Soft-boiled eggs can be intimidating in that the egg has to be cooked long enough to be handled, but not so long that the yolk turns hard.

For this recipe, bring water to a boil in a pot large enough to hold four eggs and, using a slotted spoon, gently place the eggs in their shells into the boiling water. Leave off the lid and let them cook for 6 minutes. Get a large bowl of ice water ready.

Remove the eggs from the water using the slotted spoon and place them immediately into the ice water to cool.

While the eggs cool, set up the dredging station in three separate shallow bowls. In the first, place seasoned flour (salt, pepper, maybe even some paprika if you like); in the second; make an egg wash (two eggs beaten with 2 tablespoons of water); and, in the third, fill halfway with breadcrumbs (Panko is best, but regular works fine as well). This same dredging technique is used with fried cheese and jalapeno poppers (recipes are included).

Remove an egg from the water, pat dry with a paper towel and remove the egg shell. This can also be an intimidating process. The Internet is full of techniques to remove egg shells, but a tried and true method is to gently tap the top of the egg with a teaspoon to crack the shell. With your fingers, gently remove the top third of the shell, then carefully slide the spoon, concave side facing the egg, between the shell and the egg. Work the spoon around it so the rest of the shell breaks away from the boiled egg. Set the egg aside and repeat.

Coat each egg in a light dusting of flour. Take a handful of sausage and spread it into a thin patty, no thicker than a quarter inch. It needs to be 2½ times as large as the egg. Place that on a clean cutting board and put the egg on one end of the sausage patty. Gently roll the sausage around the egg until it completely encases the egg. Place on a plate and repeat.

When done - and please do not skip this step - place the plate of eggs in the refrigerator for 20 minutes. This step firms the sausage enough so that it will not fall apart when placed in the hot oil.

Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Fill the cast iron pan half way with canola or peanut oil and heat over a stove burner set to high. You'll know when the oil is hot enough when you can drop a pinch of flour in it and it immediately sizzles.

Remove the encased eggs from the refrigerator and run them through the three-stage dredging station, then gently cook one at a time. Instead of letting the egg and sausage sit in the hot oil, use a wooden spoon to gently roll the egg in the oil as the submerged side becomes golden brown. Make sure that the Scotch egg is thoroughly fried all around, top and bottom.

When done, set on a paper towel-lined plate to drain and repeat until done.

Place the fried eggs in an oven-safe frying pan or rimmed baking sheet pan and bake for 6 minutes in the oven.

When done, use tongs to place the Scotch Eggs on a plate and serve with a generous dab of English mustard and parsley as a garnish. Pour yourself a favorite beer and turn on the game.

With this recipe and the others, you've now created the full bar experience at home - except for the loud-mouth, know-it-all who seems to be at the end of every bar.

Dan Macdonald can be reached at danmacdonald@bellsouth.net.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.